


Soaring

by closemyeyesandleap



Series: Families of SHIELD [6]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Family, Family Fluff, Gen, Grandma May, Growing Up, Inhuman Identity, Mackenzie Family (mentioned), Team (mentioned), mama may
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-17
Updated: 2018-11-17
Packaged: 2019-08-25 03:01:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16653040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/closemyeyesandleap/pseuds/closemyeyesandleap
Summary: May never got the chance to be a mom, but she's loving her time as a grandmother.(May takes Daisy's daughter flying in a quinjet for her 12th birthday.)





	Soaring

**Author's Note:**

> Mandarin words:  
> PoPo = maternal grandma (in some parts of China; shout out to TomatoBookworm for the fascinating language and culture lesson and check out the comments if you're curious :))  
> Bǎobèi = baby
> 
> Set in the same universe as my other fics with SHIELD children which I'm now putting into a series called "Families of SHIELD."

May walked into the hanger and breathed in deeply. 

She loved the lingering scent of jet fuel, the cool air wafting from the sliding doors into the base, the imposing feel of metal giants surrounding her.

It felt good to be back. She didn’t come to SHIELD as much as she should, these days. 

With Coulson’s health so delicate, she and he had fallen into a comfortable, if insular, domestic rhythm. Daisy and her family would come over for dinner sometimes, occasionally bringing the rest of the team, but usually it was just her and him.

There was nowhere she’d rather be and no one she’d rather be with. Still, her occasional excursions to the base were always welcome.

Especially this one.

“PoPo!”

The exclamation pulled her from her musings. She found herself crushed in the arms of a smiling tween.

“Can’t fly with you if I suffocate, Gaby,” May replied, giving a wry smile to Daisy’s now twelve-year-old daughter.

Gaby didn’t let go. “Yes you can. You’re just that good.”

“Go easy on her, Gabs. She’s just a little old lady. You’re going to take her out.” Daisy entered the hanger behind her daughter.

May rolled her eyes. “Your mother’s just mad I can still put her on the floor when we fight,” she told Gaby in Mandarin.

Daisy laughed, raising her eyebrow. “You two plotting against me again?” she asked in English.

Daisy had learned a little Mandarin, but nowhere near as much as her daughter. May had been speaking Mandarin to Gaby since the day she was born. Daisy usually couldn’t understand May and Gaby when they talked, but she was happy that Gaby had been able to recover part of her heritage that she’d never had the chance to.

“Maybe,” Gaby said innocently. 

“Definitely,” May added, glaring at Daisy.

May didn’t really mind the jab, though. In fact, she would worry more when Daisy _stopped_ teasing her.

Though in her late sixties, May was as strong as she’d ever been. Phil, on the other hand… Daisy had abruptly stopped calling him an old man the moment he’d started getting sick.

May would take Daisy’s teasing in an instant. It was better than her constant concern, her frequent questions masking inquiries about Phil’s health with everyday pleasantries.

May tried to push her nagging worries from her mind. Today was about her granddaughter.

“Ready?” She asked Gaby.

Gaby breathed in deeply and nodded, biting her lip slightly. 

“You want to come with?” May asked Daisy.

Gaby glanced back at her mom and shook her head slightly, her brown eyes pleading.

“No, you two have fun. I’ve got mountains of paperwork.” Daisy groaned. “Maybe when you’re done, you can come help. You know, for old time’s sake.”

May snorted. “Paperwork? You wish.” 

Daisy shrugged. “Had to try. Have fun, you two.” She hugged her daughter, giving the special hug that she reserved for Gaby, with the slightest of quakes. “Happy birthday, sweetie.”

Gaby stiffened in her mother’s arms and then wriggled away, running toward the quinjet.

May shot a glance back at Daisy, not missing the grimace of pain that flashed across Daisy’s face. Then, it was gone again, wiped away by Daisy’s smile as she waved May away.

* * *

“When you fly, the most important part is to pay close attention to every item on the checklist. Always make sure every last thing is done, no matter how sure you might be.” 

Gaby nodded seriously from the copilot’s seat, twirling a strand of hair from her ponytail around her small fingers.

The large, black seat seemed to swallow her up. Gaby had always been petite for her age, but now, in the quinjet, she seemed absolutely tiny.

“Now, most planes need to take off along a runway, like you’re used to. But quinjets are special. They take off vertically, like a helicopter.”

May prepared for flight, occasionally pointing out buttons and dials to Gaby. The girl paid close attention to everything she did, studying her. 

May finished her checks and pulled up on the yoke. The quinjet lifted off. 

Gaby’s eyes widened. The city fell rapidly beneath them, the cars on the streets and the houses growing smaller and smaller as they rose into the sky. As soon as they reached clear airspace, May shifted the quinjet into forward flight.

The two sat in silence for a while. Gaby stared ahead of her, her mouth gaping slightly open, amazed by the vastness of the sky that stretched out straight in front of her.

After a few minutes, Gaby whispered, “it’s so _weird_ from up here, PoPo.”

May smiled, nostalgia flooding her as she remembered the first time that she had sat in an airplane’s cockpit, moving ahead unencumbered into the endless expanse ahead. She loved the sense of lightness, of freedom that came from the cockpit.

It was peace and exhilaration, perfectly fused. 

Gaby seemed to have caught the bug as well.

They flew out over the ocean. Gaby remained in amazed silence. May glanced over at her granddaughter. She was always struck by how serious Gaby could be, especially compared to Daisy. 

May smiled warmly at the little girl. She and her granddaughter were a perfect match.

Still, something seemed off with Gaby. It was her birthday, after all, and though she was absorbed with the passing clouds, she seemed extra quiet.

She had stopped buzzing with excitement and her arms were drawn into her tiny chest. 

May recalled Daisy’s look from earlier. Was something going on between Daisy and her daughter?

May shifted the quinjet into autopilot and turned to her granddaughter. “You OK, bǎobèi?” she asked Gaby.

Gaby nodded. “Yeah.” She glanced over at May, seeing that her grandmother wasn’t convinced. “It’s amazing.”

“Mmhmm,” May muttered. “How are things at school?” 

“Fine.” Gaby glanced down at her entwined fingers. 

Poor kid, May thought. With spies as parents, she probably never got away with many lies. 

May didn’t press. She just sat in silence, watching the little girl. Gaby resolutely stared out the window, watching the ocean drift by down below.

As they entered a cloud a few minutes later, the words came bursting out.

“Mom doesn’t like me. She’s embarrassed I’m her kid.” 

Gaby folded her arms around her knees and rested her chin on top.

May raised an eyebrow. Daisy never stopped talking about Gaby—her school projects, her most recent soccer victories, funny anecdotes from family trips. She was bursting with pride for Gaby and couldn’t hide it from anyone who met her.

“What makes you say that, bǎobèi?”

Gaby looked ashamed. She kicked her feet under the seat. “Well, we had to write an essay for English last week about something that makes us special. I wrote about being an Inhuman. I got an A, but when I showed it to her, she got really, really mad.”

Gaby angrily wiped a small hand across her cheek. “I get it. I know I’m not a real Inhuman, not yet. But she never wants me to be one. I’m not good enough, I guess.”

“Did she say that?” 

Gaby shrugged and started fiddling with her hair.

“What makes you think that?

Gaby looked out the window, down at the passing water below. After a moment, she returned her gaze to May, whose eyes hadn’t left her. “So, I told her I wanted to do terrigenesis now, like Rosy. Mom got real angry. She said that maybe I’d never be an Inhuman, and maybe it’d be better that way, and to stop telling everyone about it.”

Ah. May understood. 

Mack and YoYo’s eldest, Rosy, had turned eighteen a few months back. Daisy, Robbie, Mack, and Elena had long decided to give their children the option of going through the mist when they became adults. Not all kids of Inhumans turn; they knew as much from all the families they’d encountered over the years. All of the kids grew more and more excited as Rosy’s eighteenth birthday neared, and when she’d entered a husk and emerged with powers, her little brothers and Gaby grew impatient. 

Mack and YoYo were relieved when Rosy’s powers revealed themselves to be relatively benign. Sure, for months she'd made any plant within a ten-foot radius instantly grow out of control, with thorns bursting from the ground when she got angry and flowers blooming around her when she was happy, and she accidentally turned the Mackenzies’ backyard into an overgrown rainforest within the course of a day, but Rosy had suffered none of the more disastrous side effects that so many Inhumans experienced.

Andrew’s face flashed into May’s mind, morphing into Lash’s before she could control the image. She took a deep breath, pushing away his memory.

“Your mom _is_ proud of you, bǎobèi,” she murmured. “You know you have to wait till you’re eighteen. You’ll be able to see if you go through terrigenesis then, just like the others.”

“I don’t think so,” Gaby sighed. “Mom doesn’t want me to be like her.”

May considered, then reached out and began stroking Gaby’s bangs out of her eyes. 

“Maybe,” May said quietly.

Gaby sniffled and looked up at her grandmother. 

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe she doesn’t want you to be like her. Maybe she’s scared.”

“Scared?” Gaby asked.

“Mmhmm, bǎobèi,” May murmured. “Terrigenesis… it’s not an easy thing to watch your little girl go through.” 

May’s mind flitted to memories of her panic as she rushed Daisy—Skye, back then—away from Lady Sif, to her terror when she saw Skye collapse on the football field, her arms covered in bruises.

“Doesn’t seem so bad,” Gaby sniffled. “You get to be a superhero. You get to be strong and do awesome things.”

May shook her head. “I knew your mom before she got her powers. At first—honey, it was really scary. Your mom didn’t even know what was going on, which made it worse. She was always scared she was going to hurt someone if she lost control, but the person she usually ended up hurting was herself.”

Gaby shook her head. “My mom doesn’t get scared.” She considered, “Well, she does sometimes, I guess. But not of her powers.” Nothing seemed more natural, more _mom_ to her than her mother’s powers.

May smiled. “She did back then. And you know what? I did too. I was very scared that she was going to keep getting hurt, and I wouldn’t be able to help her get better.”

She shifted over in her seat. “C’mere.” Gaby moved over and slid into the seat next to May. It was an advantage of their small size—they both fit easily into the single seat. May wrapped her arms around the tween.

“Your mom is so, so proud of you. She’s proud of you now, and she’ll be proud of you whether or not you end up getting powers.”

Gaby cuddled into May’s side. “It’s just that, if I got powers now, I could really help.” Gaby peered up at May with her earnest brown eyes. “Maybe I could even make Grandpa better.”

A jolt of sadness rushed through May. Phil wouldn’t want his health to weigh so heavily on his granddaughter.

Sometimes Gaby reminded her so much of Daisy.

“Bǎobèi, you know you can’t choose your powers. Right?”

“I know. But I thought…maybe if I hoped for it hard enough, there’d be a chance.”

Her arm still wrapped around Gaby, May started to stroke her granddaughter’s hair. “Honey, it doesn’t work that way. And Grandpa, he doesn’t want you worrying about that. He just wants you happy.”

Gaby curled closer to May. “I just wish I could do something. Mom and Dad are always out saving the world, and I’m just… me.” 

“Look at me. You don’t need powers to have a gift. You are a gift to everyone who knows you…your mom, your dad, me, your grandpa, your friends.” May winked at Gaby, suddenly mischievous. “And you know what your mom can’t do?”

“What?”

“Fly a quinjet.” May picked up Gaby’s hands and moved them to the yoke. “Here, you try.”

Gaby shook her head quickly. “I can’t.”

May smiled. “Yes, you can. I’m right here. Just like that… steady,” she added, guiding Gaby’s hands.

* * *

A few hours later, May guided the quinjet back down into the hanger. She glanced next to her to the little body curled asleep in the copilot’s seat and felt warmth spread across her chest. 

She brushed the bangs aside on Gaby’s forehead. The little girl stirred a little but did not wake up.

As May maneuvered the quinjet back into place, she saw that Daisy had walked into the hanger and was waiting by the jet.

She glanced back down at Gaby, and then left her where she was sleeping and exited the quinjet. 

“She’s out cold,” May told Daisy as she descended. 

“Too much fun?” Daisy asked, reaching down to embrace May.

May nodded. “You have a special little girl.” She fixed her eyes on Daisy. “You’re doing good.”

Daisy’s shoulders slumped slightly. “I don’t know. May, I really screwed up,” she sighed. 

May kept watching Daisy, silent.

“It’s just… it’s whack-a-mole with these friggin’ Watchdogs these days. I didn’t tell Gaby to not scare her, but a cell already found out about Rosy and started texting her threatening messages. I don’t know how they got her number.”

“She OK?”

Daisy nodded. “Rattled, but fine.” She snorted. “Though Mack and YoYo will be pulling weeds out of their yard for weeks. We found the guys responsible, but we’re still trying to figure out where they got their information about her.” 

Daisy grimaced. “I know it’s their birthright, but sometimes I wonder if it’s worth it. But Gaby doesn’t get it. She’s so proud of who she is, of who she could be.”

May smiled and nudged Daisy’s side. “Sound familiar?”

Daisy laughed wryly. “I’d rather her be boring. Boring and safe. But I got scared, and yelled, and I don’t know how she’ll forgive me.”

May gave her a squeeze. “Talk to her.”

Daisy sighed. “This isn’t going to get any easier, is it?”

May shook her head and pushed Daisy forward, towards the quinjet. “You’ve got this.”

**Author's Note:**

> As always, thoughts welcome!
> 
> Also, season 7 ya'll!!!


End file.
